High blood pressure (HBP), also known as hypertension, affects approximately one billion individuals world-wide. Hypertension is generally viewed as a bad thing if it persists for long periods of time or is extremely high over a very short (e.g., hours) period of time. The adverse effects of hypertension typically take many years to develop, but they include stroke, angina and heart attacks.
High blood pressure is traditionally treated with drugs. Unfortunately, not every patient who develops HBP responds favorably to such drugs. Many patients have severe adverse side effects. For others, the drugs are not effective for their intended purpose. Thus, there is a critical need for alternative methods and techniques for treating high blood pressure.
Alternate techniques for treating HBP include electrical stimulation. For example, several proposals have been made to treat moderately elevated blood pressure using highly invasive methods such as vagal (part of the vagus nerve) nerve stimulation, spinal cord stimulation and deep brain stimulation. It has been known in the past that one can stimulate the vagal nerves by invasively dissecting the major nerve bundle and placing a spiral or enveloping nerve-type cuff around the nerve bundle. The nerve fibers are then directly stimulated by an electrical field to achieve a reduction in epilepsy, heart-rate slowing, and potential blood pressure changes.
Currently, only nerve cuff-type electrodes or in-placement-type electrodes are used for nerve stimulation, other than in the spinal cord. These types of electrodes can potentially cause irreversible nerve damage due to swelling or direct mechanical damage of the nerve. The placement of these electrodes either around the nerve bundle or into the neural perineum also poses a significant risk. The electrode placement is usually performed through very invasive surgery which in and of itself produces a high risk to nerve damage.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,707,400, issued to Terry, entitled “Treating Refractory Hypertension By Nerve Stimulation,” proposes implantation of an electrical coil or cuff around the vagus nerve, which runs superficially through the neck, and stimulation of the vagus nerve to lower high blood pressure.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,522,926, issued to Kieval, entitled “Devices and Methods for Cardiovascular Reflex Control,” and several other patents issued to the same inventor, describe devices, systems and methods by which the blood pressure is reduced by activating baroreceptors. The baroreceptors are the biological sensors in the wall of the carotid artery that indicate to the brain an abrupt rise or fall of blood pressure by responding to the stretch of the arterial wall. In response to baroreceptor stimulation, the brain reduces the pumping of the heart with the consequential moderation of blood pressure. This phenomenon is known as the body's “baroreflex”.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,199,428, issued to Obel, entitled “Implantable Electrical Nerve Stimulator/Pacemaker with Ischemia for Decreasing Cardiac Workload,” describes a method and apparatus for (1) stimulating the right and/or left carotid sinus nerves, (2) the right stellate ganglion or (3) the epidural space of the spine with electrical pulses in response to detected myocardial ischemia to decrease cardiac workload as a method to protect the myocardium.
The methods described above are potent and are capable of, at least temporarily, reducing blood pressure in a patient. However, such methods are highly invasive and have potentially debilitating or life threatening side effects. In general, it may be said that these methods attempt to regulate blood pressure by directly changing the vital parts of the central nervous system such as brain, spinal cord, vagus nerve and carotid sinus nerves. The potential side effects of such a device,—including nerve damage and paralysis—make the use of these methods unlikely except in the most severe cases where the high risk can be justified.
Another alternative technique for treating HBP, and a host of other physiological conditions, illnesses and deficiencies is acupuncture. Acupuncture has been practiced in Eastern civilizations (principally China, but also other Asian countries) for over 2500 years. It is still practiced today throughout many parts of the world, including the United States and Europe. A good summary of the history of acupuncture, and its potential applications may be found in Cheung, et al., “The Mechanism of Acupuncture Therapy and Clinical Case Studies”, (Taylor & Francis, publisher) (2001) ISBN 0-415-27254-8, hereafter referred to as “Cheung, Mechanism of Acupuncture, 2001.” The Forward, Chapters 1-3, and 5 of Cheung, Mechanism of Acupuncture, 2001, is incorporated herein by reference.
Despite the practice in Eastern countries for over 2500 years, it was not until President Richard Nixon visited China (in 1972) that acupuncture began to be accepted in Western countries, such as the United States and Europe. One of the reporters who accompanied Nixon during his visit to China, James Reston, from the New York Times, received acupuncture in China for post-operative pain after undergoing an emergency appendectomy under standard anesthesia. Reston experienced pain relief from the acupuncture and wrote about it in The New York Times. In 1973 the American Internal Revenue Service allowed acupuncture to be deducted as a medical expense. Following Nixon's visit to China, and as immigrants began flowing from China to Western countries, the demand for acupuncture increased steadily. Today, acupuncture therapy is viewed by many as a viable alternative form of medical treatment, alongside Western therapies. Moreover, acupuncture treatment is now covered, at least in part, by most insurance carriers. Further, payment for acupuncture services consumes a not insignificant portion of healthcare expenditures in the U.S. and Europe. See, generally, Cheung, Mechanism of Acupuncture, 2001, vii.
Acupuncture is an alternative medicine that treats patients by insertion and manipulation of needles in the body at selected points. Novak, Patricia D. et al (1995). Dorland's Pocket Medical Dictionary (25th ed.). Philadelphia: (W.B. Saunders Publisher). ISBN 0-7216-5738-9. The locations where the acupuncture needles are inserted are referred to herein as “acupuncture points” or simply just “acupoints”. The location of acupoints in the human body has been developed over thousands of years of acupuncture practice, and maps showing the location of acupoints in the human body are readily available in acupuncture books or online. For example, see, “Acupuncture Points Map,” found online at: http://www.acupuncturehealing.org/acupuncture-points-map.html. Acupoints are typically identified by various letter/number combinations, e.g., L6, S37, which maps also identify what condition, illness or deficiency the particular acupoint affects when manipulation of needles inserted at the acupoint is undertaken.
References to the acupoints in the literature are not always consistent with respect to the format of the letter/number combination. Some acupoints are identified by a name only, e.g., Tongi. The same acupoint may be identified by others by the name followed with a letter/number combination placed in parenthesis, e.g., Tongi (HT5). The first letter typically refers to a body organ, or other tissue location associated with, or affected by, that acupoint. However, usually only the letter is used in referring to the acupoint, but not always. Thus, for example, the acupoint P-6 is the same as acupoint Pericardium 6, which is the same as PC-6, which is the same as PC6, which is the same as Pe 6 which is the same as Neiguan. For purposes of this patent application, unless specifically stated otherwise, all references to acupoints that use the same name, or the same first letter and the same number, and regardless of slight differences in second letters and formatting, are intended to refer to the same acupoint. Thus, for example, the acupoint Neiguan is the same acupoint as Neiguan (P6), which is the same acupoint as Neiguan (PC6), which is the same acupoint as Neiguan (PC-6), which is the same acupoint as Neiguan (Pe-6), which is the same acupoint as P6, or P 6, or PC-6, PC6 or Pe 6.
An excellent reference book that identifies all of the traditional acupoints within the human body is WHO STANDARD ACUPUNCTURE POINT LOCATIONS IN THE WESTERN PACIFIC REGION, published by the World Health Organization (WHO), Western Pacific Region, 2008 (updated and reprinted 2009), ISBN 978 92 9061 248 7 (hereafter “WHO Standard Acupuncture Point Locations 2008”). The Table of Contents, Forward (page v-vi) and General Guidelines for Acupuncture Point Locations (pages 1-21), as well as pages 45, 64, 151 and 154 (which pages illustrate with particularity the location of acupoints ST36, ST37, PC5 and PC6) of the WHO Standard Acupuncture Point Locations 2008 are submitted herewith as Appendix D, and are incorporated herein by reference.
While many in the scientific and medical community are highly critical of the historical roots upon which acupuncture has developed, (e.g., claiming that the existence of meridians, qi, yin and yang, and the like have no scientific basis), see, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acupuncture, few can refute the vast amount of successful clinical and other data, accumulated over centuries of acupuncture practice, that shows needle manipulation applied at certain acupoints is quite effective.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United States' National Institutes of Health (NIH) have stated that acupuncture can be effective in the treatment of neurological conditions and pain. Reports from the USA's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), the American Medical Association (AMA) and various USA government reports have studied and commented on the efficacy of acupuncture. There is general agreement that acupuncture is safe when administered by well-trained practitioners using sterile needles, but not on its efficacy as a medical procedure.
An early critic of acupuncture, Felix Mann, who was the author of the first comprehensive English language acupuncture textbook Acupuncture: The Ancient Chinese Art of Healing, stated that “The traditional acupuncture points are no more real than the black spots a drunkard sees in front of his eyes.” Mann compared the meridians to the meridians of longitude used in geography—an imaginary human construct. Mann, Felix (2000). Reinventing acupuncture: a new concept of ancient medicine. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. pp. 14; 31. ISBN 0-7506-4857-0. Mann attempted to combine his medical knowledge with that of Chinese theory. In spite of his protestations about the theory, however, he apparently believed there must be something to it, because he was fascinated by it and trained many people in the west with the parts of it he borrowed. He also wrote many books on this subject. His legacy is that there is now a college in London and a system of needling that is known as “Medical Acupuncture”. Today this college trains doctors and western medical professionals only.
For purposes of this patent application, the arguments for and against acupuncture are interesting, but not that relevant. What is important is that a body of literature exists that identifies several acupoints within the human body that, rightly or wrongly, have been identified as having an influence on, or are otherwise somehow related to, the treatment of various physiological conditions, deficiencies or illnesses, including hypertension. With respect to these acupoints, the facts speak for themselves. Either these points do or do not affect the conditions, deficiencies or illnesses with which they have been linked. The problem lies in trying to ascertain what is fact from what is fiction. This problem is made more difficult when conducting research on this topic because the insertion of needles, and the manipulation of the needles once inserted, is more of an art than a science, and results from such research become highly subjective. What is needed is a much more regimented approach for doing acupuncture research.
It should also be noted that other medical research, not associated with acupuncture research, has over the years identified nerves and other locations throughout a patient's body where the application of electrical stimulation produces a beneficial effect for the patient. Indeed, the entire field of neurostimulation deals with identifying locations in the body where electrical stimulation can be applied in order to provide a therapeutic effect for a patient. For purposes of this patent application, such known locations within the body are treated essentially the same as acupoints—they provide a “target” location where electrical stimulation may be applied to achieve a beneficial result, whether that beneficial result is to reduce pain, to treat myocardial ischemia, to treat hypertension, to mitigate some other form of cardiovascular disease or to address some other issue associated with a disease or condition of the patient.
Returning to the discussion regarding acupuncture, some have proposed applying moderate electrical stimulation at selected acupuncture points through the needles that have been inserted. See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroacupuncture. Such electrical stimulation is known as electroacupuncture (EA). According to Acupuncture Today, a trade journal for acupuncturists: “Electroacupuncture is quite similar to traditional acupuncture in that the same points are stimulated during treatment. As with traditional acupuncture, needles are inserted on specific points along the body. The needles are then attached to an electrical device that generates continuous electric pulses using small clips. Such electrical device is used to adjust the frequency and intensity of the impulse being delivered, depending on the condition being treated. Electroacupuncture uses two needles at a time so that the impulses can pass from one needle to the other. Several pairs of needles can be stimulated simultaneously, usually for no more than 30 minutes at a time.” “Acupuncture Today: Electroacupuncture”. 2004-02-01. (Retrieved on-line 2006-08-09 at http://www.acupuncturetoday.com/abc/electroacupuncture.php.)
Recent research has reported the use of electroacupuncture (EA) for the treatment of hypertension. Li et al., “Neural Mechanism of Electroacupuncture's Hypotensive Effects”, Autonomic Neuroscience: Basic and Clinical 157 (2010) 24-30. Such report indicates that Chinese and Southeast Asian medical professionals have long utilized acupuncture, and its potent and more standardized alternative, electroacupuncture (EA) to treat disease. EA is characterized in the report as being administered by a small electrical current through needles from a battery driven device.
The reason why acupuncture, including EA, has a depressor effect on some types of hypertension is discussed at length in Cheung, Mechanism of Acupuncture, 2001, chapter 5, previously incorporated herein by reference.
In U.S. Pat. No. 7,373,204, issued to Gelfand et al., entitled “Implantable Device and Method for Treatment of Hypertension”, there is disclosed a method and apparatus that treats hypertension with electrostimulation of peripheral nerves. A pacemaker-sized device is implanted in the fatty tissue of the patient, e.g., in the chest, and then long leads, with electrodes at their distal ends, are tunneled through body tissue so that the electrodes reside at a desired location. In one embodiment, the desired location where electrostimulation is applied is near the median nerve in the wrist of the patient, which corresponds to acupoints P5 and P6. Gelfand also recognizes that acupuncture, including electroacupuncture, has been used to treat hypertension. See, '204 patent (Gelfand et al), col. 3, lines 43-60.
To use a device as described in Gelfand et al, to treat hypertension, a lead must be tunneled through the entire length of the patient's arm. Such a method is as invasive as, and suffers from most of the same problems as, the prior-described attempts at stimulation of the vital parts of the central nervous system. In addition, the complications associated with tunneling and removal of leads, which include infection, breakage, as well as the need to perform additional surgery, are not trivial.
Yet others have described similar techniques for using electrical devices, including external EA devices, for stimulating peripheral nerves and other body locations for treatment of various maladies. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,535,784; 4,566,064; 5,195,517; 5,250,068; 5,251,637; 5,891,181; 6,393,324; 6,006,134; 7,171,266; and 7,171,266. The methods and devices disclosed in these patents, however, typically utilize either large implantable stimulators having long leads that must be tunneled through tissue to reach the desired stimulation site, or use external devices that must interface with implanted electrodes via percutaneous leads or wires passing through the skin. Such devices and methods are still far too invasive, or are ineffective, and thus subject to the same limitations and concerns, as are the previously described electrical stimulation devices.
From the above, it is seen that there is room for much improvement in the electroacupuncture art for treating hypertension and other patient maladies. In particular, it is seen that a much less invasive device and technique are needed for electroacupuncture stimulation of acupoints that does not require the continual use of needles inserted through the skin, or long insulated lead wires, for the purpose of treating hypertension.